Latias
by Mudkipman98
Summary: Paul and his two friends, Ryan and Michael were long time Pokemon fans, spending hours at a time playing through the games together. But on one fateful December night, they share an encounter that will change their lives.
1. Chapter 1

Latias. Pokedex #380. As of the fifth generation games, its data is as follows: Its body is covered with a down that can refract light in such a way that it becomes invisible. Interesting data to be sure. Many people would like to abuse this power for evil purposes. That's why I've got to keep her a secret.

My name is Paul. I live in America and have since I was born. I've been to several places in the country before my parents finally stopped moving around and decided to settle in Washington.

For about a month, as everywhere we moved, I was socially awkward. I didn't know when we'd be moving again, so I didn't attempt to make any friends. I just hung in the back of the class and tried to pay attention to whatever was happening at the front of the room.

One day, a new group of students joined the class. It was about mid February in my 7th grade year. I ignored them though and just sat at the back of the class playing Pokemon Saphire on my Gameboy SP, waiting for them to take their seets. Most of them immediately started chatting away with people in the front. Most of them. Two of the new guys, though, came to the back and asked if they could sit in the empty desks next to mine. To be polite, I said sure and they took their seats on either side of mine. When the one on my left noticed that I was playing Pokemon, he tapped on my shoulder and started talking to me.

"You still play Pokemon?" he asked me. 'Oh great. One of these guys,' I thought to myself. That is, until he pulled out a Gameboy and Pokemon Ruby. He opened it up, started up his game, and showed me his team.

Long story short, we became instant friends.

But not before the guy on my right noticed what we were doing. In seconds, he had out his Gameboy and a copy of Pokemon Emerald. We began to talk a lot about the games and the guy on my left even started bringing a link cable to school. Before long, we'd spend our class time playing the trading card game and our lunch battling and trading. The guy to my left was named Ryan and the guy to my right was named Michael.

As we finished out highschool, we bought the new Pokemon games and systems to go with and continued our love of the game. When we both were deciding to go off to college, we miraculously chose and got accepted to the same one. It was great luck, but nothing compared to what we would encounter in the first year.

It was around Christmas and we all were thinking about getting the new Pokemon games for eachother (though none of us knew it yet) when the fire in our dorm blew out. We'd thought for a while that maybe there was a problem with the fireplace, but we had ignored it until now. Some of the other guys in the dorm complained about the fire before Ryan, Michael and I got it started again. Then we sat down in front of the fire and popped in our old Pokemon Saphire, Ruby, and Emerald games. We used the link cable to battle eachother for a while, then decided to go to bed. We had earlier classes than most of the other students, so we usually went to bed early (the operative word there being 'usually'). Thankfully, none of them were tommorow.

Then, in about the middle of the night, I was woken up by the sound of some sort of high pitched moan. I just assumed that one of the other guys had brought home a girl when I heard it again, this time coming from outside my window. I carefully got up out of bed and walked slowly to the window. Ryan, Michael and I shared a room, so I didn't want to wake them up.

When I looked outside, I couldn't see much of anything. It was snowing pretty hard so there wasn't much visibility to begin with. When I squinted my eyes, I could make out a depression in the snow like something had dragged itself around the house.

Now, it's important to note that, as a kid, I didn't like stop motion or live action snow men very much. They always sort of creeped me out. So, when I recognized what I thought was the round path of one of those hellspawn of christmas specials, I started silently freaking out.

I still didn't want to wake up my friends, so I slipped on some shoes, grabbed a tennis racket out of our closet, and made my way to the front door. I picked up a flash light in the main room with the fireplace and made my way over to the front window of the dorm. Strangely, this was one of five buildings that where seperate from the rest of the student dorms. Pure luck was on our side during the housing registration.

When I looked outside of the hazy window expecting to see a killer Frosty the Snowman, I instead saw something moving into a patch of trees and shrubbery near the house. It was dragging itself on the ground, and it didn't look too round, so I dropped my killer snowman theory. Its outline looked strangely familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place it. So I went back to bed and tried my best to fall back asleep.

No matter how many different positions I tried, I couldn't manage to find anything comfortable. Instead, I got back up and moved to the corner of our room which housed an Xbox 360. I popped in Call of Duty Black Ops and put on my turtle beach headset. I didn't want to make any noise, but the game needs sound to be played well.

As I fought through hordes of the undead on Kino der Toten, a map resembling a theatre, my mind kept drifting back to that thing that had been going around our house. Surely it couldn't have gone far. It didn't look completely healthy, but at the same time, it could've been a rabid badger. Though I doubted a badger of any sort would be prowling around our dorm, seemingly looking for a way in.

I was overun by zombies and died, so I turned off the Xbox and put everything away. Then, just for kicks, I thought I'd take a look outside and see what that thing was. I armed myself with my racket and flashlight again and stepped out into the snow. I shut the door lightly so as not to wake up anyone and made my way over to the small group of trees.

As I got closer and closer, I began to hear the same sort of moaning, quieter this time and much, much weaker. Whatever this thing was, it must've been in horrible shape. As I finally got close to where I thought the creature was in the bushes, I clicked on my flashlight and began to slowly shine it across the bushes.

So far so good. Some snow, a few small frost bitten flowers, a small patch of grass, a big red and white thing, the roots of a tr- Wait a second. Big red and white thing? I moved my flashlight back over the spot where I saw the anomally and stared in wonder at what was half burried in the snow.

Lying before me, shivering yet almost completely motionless, and letting out a faint, high pitched moan, was a Latias. There was no mistaking it. I'd seen Pokemon Heroes and played Pokemon Saphire for too long not to recognize it. I slowly started backing away from it. I still couldn't believe my eyes. I backed up until I tripped on a rather large mound of snow, causing me to fall backwards and hit my head on the ground. I dropped my flashlight in the process and the thing went out. I could barely see the outline of the house through the snow now.

I ignored my loss of sight and focussed only on my sense of hearing and touch. I felt my way through the snow until my hand touched something slightly warm. When I focussed hard with my eyes on what was in front of me, I found that I was looking into the large amber eyes of the Latias. I also found that my hand was on its forehead.

The Latias lowered its head and shut its eyes, managing to let out a small purr. I kept my hand on its head, unsure what would happen if I removed it. Getting ahold of my sense once again, I started to talk to it. I don't know where it came from, but my mouth started moving and words started coming out.

"Are you okay?" I asked, genuinely curious, though, like I said, I didn't know I was speaking. The Latias looked up at me again and it slowly turned its head left and right, no. I was amazed that it could understand English and I started to control what I was saying more.

"Do you want to come inside?" I asked. My god. I couldn't believe I just asked a fictional creature from a video game if it wanted to come inside. What was I thinking?! Any of my dorm mates, even Ryan and Michael, would freak out if I showed them this Latias, much less tried to bring it in. Either way though, I couldn't stand the thought of leaving it out there to get worse or, in the worse case scenerio, die.

It perked up slightly before drooping its head again. Without waiting for another response I moved my hand down its neck and used my racket hand to grab hold of its lower back. I then moved around it and lifted, picking it up and holding it in my arms. Its head was dangling over my left arm and it looked like it was falling unconscious.

"Crap," I said to myself. I needed to get her inside and fast. I looked around for the dorm and managed to find it in the darkness. I started stumbling toward it and made my way for our bedroom window. We always kept it unlocked for air if we needed it, so I nudged it open with my shoulder (it was one of those that swings in like a door) and carefully set the Latias down on the floor. I followed her in, making sure not to step on her, and then I made my way over to Ryan and Michael's bunk bed. I'd have to tell them at some point, so I thought to myself 'sooner rather than later'.

I tried to wake up Ryan first. "Hey Ryan, wake up," I whispered. He managed to pick up on that and he began to stir before sitting up.

"Dude, why'd you wake me up?" he said groggily as he rubbed his eyes.

"There's something you and Michael need to see. Wake him up for me, will ya?" I said back.

"Sure thing," he said before fumbiling around in the darkness for the ladder that led up to the top bunk. "Hey Michael, wake up," he said as he smacked the side of Michael's head. That woke him up fast and he sat up, wondering if we were being robbed.

""What's going on?" he said, frightened a little. "You can have my money, but you're not taking my Xbox!"

"Whoa, easy Michael," I whispered. "Don't wake up the whole dorm." He looked where he thought I was and flipped me the bird. "Well goodmorning to you too," I said. Michael then flipped around and got off of the top bunk onto the ground.

"So why'd you wake us up?" asked Ryan.

"Yeah man," said Michael. "I was just about to score." Ryan and I both eyeballed Michael for a second. "What? Don't tell me you've never been to a bar before in your dreams."

I shook my head and got to the point. "I'm going to show you both something, but you've got to promise not to scream. Or yell. Or do anything that could wake up the other guys. Okay?" I asked.

I could tell that Ryan and Michael were starting to get curious. "Whatever you say," said Ryan.

"Alright," I said. "Here we go." With that, I walked over to the light switch on the wall and flicked it on. When I turned around, Ryan and Michael's faces were frozen in shock. I then walked over to the window and knelt down. "Ryan, Michael, this is Latias," I said as I reached down to pet its forehead.

Neither of them moved for a few seconds. Finally, Ryan spoke up. "Is that what I think it is?" he said slowly, his mouth agape.

"I think so," I said back.

"So then you've just brought in..." began Michael.

"A fictional character from a japanese video game that we've spent our whole lives playing? Yes. I think I have," I said, looking back down at the Latias. It wasn't shivering anymore and it had moved closer to me.

"Paul, I think you've left the window open," said Michael slowly. I stood up and shut it carefully so as not to make any noise.

"Paul, did you wish really really hard?" asked Ryan.

"What? No!" I said back. There was a slight pause and then...

"Well," began Ryan, "I think we should all get some rest." He clapped his hands together lightly and then crawled back into bed.

"Yeah, right behind you," said Michael slowly, still staring at the Latias as he climbed the ladder up to the second bunk.

They were both back asleep in seconds, probably just thinking that they had fallen into a strange dream. Of course, they couldn't have been more wrong if that was the case.

Gently, I picked up the Latias again and carried it over to my bed. I pulled back the covers and set it down, then replaced them for the Pokemon. It turned to look at me before closing its eyes in exhaustion and falling asleep. I smiled at it before climbing the ladder to my own bed's top bunk which was normally used in case of an emergency. I then pulled over the covers and fell asleep with the strange feeling that something was watching me.

I woke up the next morning to something laying on top of me. For a minute, I thought that I'd gotten drunk and that I'd brought some bar fly home. But when I opened my eyes, I found that I was staring into the eyes of the Latias. "Waa!" I shouted as I backed up to the wall.

The Latias hovered above my bed in the little room that was there between the roof and me before coming closer to my face again. As my back touched the wall, I knew there was no escape. If I was gonna die, then it'd be a good way to go. Instead, the Latias flopped down on my left and nestled into the bed sheets.

I sat there puzzled for a minute before whispering loudly, "Ryan. RYAN." He woke up with a start and fumbled for his alarm clock. When he picked it up, it read 8:30 AM. He groaned and then tried to fall back asleep. "RYAN!" I whispered again, this time with more volume. He immediately sat up and looked up at me.

His jaw dropped as he saw where the Latias was. "Am I still dreaming?" he said to himself.

"No you idiot," I said back. "What should I do?" I mouthed to him.

"I don't know," he mouthed back. He then got up and walked over to the ladder of my bunk bed and pulled himself up. He started snickering to himself all of a sudden.

"What's so funny?" I whispered.

"Dude, you look like you just finished-" He then stopped talking and motioned from side to side with his finger.

"What the hell?!" I whispered back. "I just woke up and she was layin' on top of me!"

"Sure she was," whispered Ryan back as he continued to snicker.

"Just help me off the bed," I continued. Ryan then got off of the ladder and dug through one of his drawrs for a screw driver. "What are you going to do with that?" I asked.

"I'm gonna take off the railing so you can roll of onto the floor," he said.

"Are you crazy?" I asked, still whispering. "I'm gonna break a rib or something!"

"Then just act like a cat and land on your feet," he whispered back.

I sighed a little before saying, "Okay, but just hurry up. This is wierd." After about a minute, he had the screws out of the railing that was holding it on. He then lifted it off and carefully set it down on the floor.

"Okay, now just roll off," he said.

"Alright. Here I go." I slowly started to inch away from the Latias and I was soon on the edge of the bed. I then rolled off and-

~*THUD*~

I landed on my left arm and winced a little bit before getting up. "Oh, jeez," I said through gritted teeth. I could suddenly hear footsteps coming down the hall to our room. "Crap. It's the other guys," I said. "How are we gonna hide her?" I noticed that I had just refered to the Latias as her instead of it.

"Um, throw the covers over her," said Ryan. "But don't wake her up."

I climbed the ladder again and carefully threw the sheets over Latias. No sooner had I climbed down the ladder then a knock came on the door. "Come in," I said without thinking. Ryan shot a quick glance at me as if to say, 'What the hell are you thinking?' I responded with a light shrug.

One of the other guys came in. He noticed the lump on my bed and said to me, "Who's that up there?"

"Um, no one," I said back. "Absolutely no one."

"Oh really?" he said. He then jogged over to the bed and started climbing the ladder.

"Actually, I wouldn't go near that if I were-" Too late. He had already thrown the sheet off of the bed. I kept expecting him to fall off in shock or yell. Or something. But he never did. Instead he seemed confused.

"What the..." he said as he looked at the empty bed. "Is this some kind of joke?" he said as he turned back to me.

"Um, yeah. I'm practicing a magic routine," I said as I looked at the bed. Latias was nowhere in sight. I had to stop my jaw from dropping in shock.

"That's a pretty damn good trick," said the guy as he climbed down from the top bunk. "Keep up the good work," he said as he shot me a smile and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Ryan and I both breathed a sigh of relief. Then, our minds turned to another question. "Where is she?" I asked Ryan.

"I don't know. Um... let's think," he said. "The Pokedex! Remember, it says that Latias can turn invisible. Maybe she's still here."

"Good idea," I said back. "Latias, are you in here?" I whispered. Nothing. Not a single sound came from the room. Then, I heard the bed springs on my bed (the lower one) contract as weight fell upon them. Latias suddenly appeared out of thin air, laying on the bed and looking at us.

"Thank God," I said. I then walked over to her and sat on the bed next to her. She looked at me with the cutest face I have ever seen. Not even a puppy could compare. I began to ask her a few questions, mainly because I was curious. "How did you get here?"

She turned away from me, shut her eyes, and dipped her head. "Don't want to talk about it?" I asked. She nodded her head yes. "Um, are you hungry? Can I get you anything to eat?" Latias lifted her head and let out a loud 'Whoo!' sound. She was smiling and seemed happy to hear that there was food somewhere.

"Well, that answers that question," said Ryan. "I'll go see what I can find in the kitchen." With that, Ryan left the room, assumedly to go to the kitchen. Meanwhile, Michael was beginning to wake up.

"Oh man..." he said, rubbing his head as he sat up. "I had the coolest and possibly strangest dream last night." I watched as he put on some sunglasses that he had with him. "You and Ryan were there and you brought home- get this -a Latias from the old Pokemon games. Can you believe...it?"

He finally noticed Latias laying on my bed and stared for a few seconds. "So then, I wasn't dreaming?" he asked me. I simply shook my head and mouthed 'No'. "Hmph. So then, what do we do?" he continued as he got off of the top bunk.

"I'm not sure," I said back. "Ryan went to go find some breakfast for her. The other guys should be out by now, so it's probably okay to let her out into the main room."

"I'm just gonna go check on that and make sure that everyone is really gone," he said to me. Michael then left the room, leaving me alone with Latias.

For a few minutes, we simply sat alone on my bed. Neither of us moved or said anything. Then, without warning, Latias slammed into me, knocking me over onto the bed. She was now lying on top of me, which, quite honestly, was a little bit creepy, when she suddenly started to cry. She buried her face into my shoulder and cried her eyes out.

Now, let me get this straight. I'm not used to having a girl crying on my shoulder. I only ever dated a girl once, and she left me for another girl. Yes, you heard me. Another girl. So after that, I never spent time with any other women. I was totally lost in what to do, so I just did what I saw on all of those reality shows and movies. I hugged her and stroked her head and told her everything would be okay. I didn't really know what else to do, so I continued until she stopped crying.

When she was finally done, she looked up into my eyes with a longing stare that I fell into immediately. I didn't know what was wrong, but I wanted to help her any way that I could. "Can you show me what's wrong, Latias?" I asked her.

She nodded and then started moving her head closer to mine. I wasn't sure what she was doing, but if it could help to solve her problem, then I was willing to do it. When her face was about an inch away from mine, she lowered her head and pushed her forehead against mine.

Suddenly, time seemed to stop. Everything went grayscale and I couldn't move. Nothing was moving around me, not even Latias. After a few seconds of this, I got a massive headache. Not quite a migraine, but a very bad headache. Images suddenly began flashing through my mind almost like a piece of old movie film. I could see these men chasing Latias. They were all wearing white labcoats and carrying what looked like tranqualizer guns. My view suddenly shifted from following Latias to seeing through her eyes as she flew down a hallway in an attempt to escape them. Pain suddenly lanced up my back and my vision reddened a little as Latias gradually began to slow down. The view went all black for a few seconds before switching to Latias strapped to some kind of table. There were more scientists around her and armed guards at a door in the corner of the room. I was still seeing what Latias was seeing, so I wasn't sure what to expect. As she looked around the room, I got some more information. There was another door with more armored guards and a one-way-window like the ones on all of those police tv shows. More pain struck my right arm and my vision reddened more. When Latias looked over to her right arm, one of the scientists had stuck her with a needle. He was injecting some kind of anesthetic into it. He and three others then moved to either side of Latias and prepped more needles, though these were empty. They then stuck Latias in the wings and began to draw out blood. The anesthetic wasn't working because I could feel incredible pain around my shoulder blades, no doubt representing the pain that she felt in her wings. They then proceeded to check around her, examining her body and looking it over. Another stab of pain hit my neck and I could feel Latias lose control of her body. Everything suddenly went dark again and I waited for my sight to return. When it did, I saw through Latias's eyes that she was lying in a snow-filled ditch. They had just abondoned her on the side of the road.

The headache stopped and time began to flow again as Latias pulled away from me and the images disappeared. I sat staring at her for a moment as she hung her head, tear droplets beginning to form in the corners of her eyes.

Without giving it a second thought, I reached for her and hugged her tightly. I didn't know what else to do, especially for someone in such a condition. She immediately began to cry again, this time hanging her head over my shoulder causing her tears to stain my back.

"What the hell are you two doing?" asked Ryan as he stood in the doorway.

Without moving, I simply said, "Both of you, get in here now. We need to talk."


	2. Chapter 2

Ryan and Michael came into the room with a plate of pancakes and sat down on Ryan's bed while I explained what I'd seen. Their faces became more full of worry and sadness as I explained to them what happened.

"And they may still be trying to find her," I finished.

"But if that was the case, why would they have dumped her on the road?" asked Michael.

"Maybe that was an accident. I'm not sure," I said before I turned back to Latias. "Latias, do you remember what happened before you were left on the road?" She looked at me for a second before shaking her head no.

"Well, there's not much we can do right now," began Ryan, "other than protect her here. I mean, we've got an extra bed for emergencies, and I certainly count this as one."

"Yeah, but aren't the other guys going to notice if we keep taking extra food back to our room?" asked Ryan as he tossed Latias a pancake. She caught it and started to eat it slowly.

"We won't know for sure until we try," I said back.

"So what if those guys are really looking for her for something?" asked Michael.

"If that's the case, then we'd better be careful," said Ryan.

"Yeah," I continued. "We'll have to be careful where we take her and where she can go," I said as she recieved another pancake and continued eating. She looked up at me when I said that and frowned slightly. "I'm sorry Latias, but it's the truth."

"Guess you're right," said Michael. "So what do we do from here?"

"I guess all we can do is wait for a while. We'll see if anything goes on. We'll watch the news, buy the paper; we'll do anything we can to get information on these guys," I said. "Let's start by searching the internet for 'em. Michael, where's your laptop?"

"I left it at my mom's place," he said. "Remember when I visited her a week ago? I got bored so I booted up a rom of Mario and started playing that. Regardless, what are we gonna search for on the internet that's going to help us find them? I mean, it's not like we can just boot up Google or Bing and type in, 'secret science organizations of America'."

"Why not?" asked Ryan and I simultaneously.

"I guess it's worth a try," said Michael. "But don't expect anything. If they really are some sort of secret organization, then they aren't going to be advertising themselves."

~Three Hours Later~

"Well would ya look at that," I said after typing in 'secret science organizations of America'. About three results popped up. The first was some sort of club on facebook that was dedicated to dominating the world with bacon. The second was a small page about some guys at a place called Black Mesa. They were spouting stuff about 'changing the world' and 'aliens invading'. The last link, however, led to a black and white window that had a text box in the middle.

"Maybe this is it," said Ryan as he looked over my shoulder.

"If it is, then those scientists must be really stupid," said Michael.

"Maybe we need some sort of code," I said. Latias started hovering behind me and pointing her fingers (or claws?) at some keys. "Maybe that's it," I said.

"That, or she's just guessing," said Ryan. Latias turned and made an angry face at him.

"We might as well try it," I said. I carefully entered each of the keys that Latias continued to point out until the box said something along the lines of AJEIGNS656SJGLSF. Nothing happened so I tapped the enter button a few times. The screen suddenly went blue and an error message popped up.

"Dude, what the hell?!" yelled Michael.

"What'd I do?" I asked him, slightly frantic.

"You just blue-screened my computer! Oh god; if any of my Minecraft saves are gone, you're dead," he said in complete anger.

After a few minutes, Michael shut down his computer, started it back up and sighed in relief. "Everthing seems to be okay," he said to Ryan and I.

"That must've been their site then," I said. "Whatever caused the blue screen must've been some sort of securty measure to stop random people from getting in."

"That's a good assumption," said Ryan. "But if we can't figure out the code, then we'll never get in."

"True..." I said as I went deep into thought. We all sat pondering for a few minutes what we could do to discover the code or get into the system.

"I've got it!" said Michael all of a sudden. "I've got a hacking program on my USB at the school. It's probably still in my desktop computer in class."

"Great!" said Ryan. "So let's go and get it then."

"Problem," said Michael. "My teacher keeps the room under high security lock down on the weekends. He only unlocks it for class."

"Well, you're one of his favorites aren't you?" I asked him. "Maybe you could talk to him and get him to let you in."

"I don't know," said Michael. "He's very protective of his technology. If he starts asking me why I need to get in, then I could get in trouble."

"That's a risk we're gonna have to take," I said.

"Ugh... Fine," said Michael at last. "I'll give him a call and ask him if we can use the lab."

"Great," said Ryan.

"I'll see you guys in a minute," said Michael as he left the room.

He entered again in a few minutes frowning. "Well guys," he began, "I've got some bad news..."

"What? We can't get in?" I asked.

"We've got full access," he said as a smile began forming on his face. "Gotcha!"

"You didn't 'get us' at all," said Ryan.

"He said we've only got a half-hour though, so we'd better get moving," said Michael. "Grab my laptop and let's go."

"Right," Ryan and I said. With that, we all got dressed and prepared to go when a sudden realization hit me.

"Wait a minute, guys," I said. "We can't let Latias be seen. What'll happen if we go out there?" She turned to look at me and deadpanned. She suddenly disappeared for a few seconds before reapearing, smiling at us. "Oh, right," I said, a little embarassed that I'd forgotten one of her key abilities.

We hurriedly stepped out into the sunlight and snow and made our way for the main building that housed almost all of the classrooms and chambers. Latias flew close to me, staying completely invisible. On our way, a few students stopped to look at us and I thought Latias was beeing seen. Thankfully, they all turned away, completely oblivious.

"Sir, a remote connection attempted to gain access to our servers. What should we do?"

"Ignore it. It's probably just some kids mugging about on Google."

"Aye, sir."

As we made our way through the main building, a few janitors stopped to look at us running through the halls, but just dismissed us as we continued. Eventually, we arrived at the lab door. There was no sign of Michael's professor, though.

"Hey, I thought you said he was gonna let us in," I said to Michael.

"He is. One second," he responded. Michael then knelt down next to the handle and pushed a small red button next to the lock. Next to it were a few small holes in the metal that looked like a speaker. "Um, hello? We're here, Mr. Stevens," he said to the lock.

"Alright," came a stern voice through the speaker. "I'll let you boys in." Seconds later, we heard a click come from the door and it swung inward slightly.

Michael pressed the button again. "Thank you, sir."

"No problem," said the man on the other end. "Just don't screw around."

"How's that work?" asked Ryan.

"Electronic lock," said Michael. "He controls it with his phone."

Michael led us inside and then took us to one of the computers in the rows upon rows of them. "Alright," he said. "Hand me my laptop." I gave it to him and he set it down on the table next to one of the monitors. He then started up the computer tower and waited for it to boot up.

While it was starting up, I asked him, "So Michael, how's this supposed to work?"

"Well, basically," he began, and then he mumbled some confusing stuff at me which I still can't make heads or tails of. "In laymen's terms, it's going to try every possible code at the same time. It's likely the computer will crash, but we've got no choice."

Once the computer was booted up, he pulled out a usb cable out of his pocket and used it to hook together the computer tower and his laptop. He then took the usb drive he had the hacking program on and plugged it into his laptop as well.

"So why do we need two computers?" asked Ryan.

"I've got a program on my laptop that can allow me to use the ram from another computer for other things. It's how I play Crysis in HD without melting my processor," said Michael. Once the tower had powered up, he opened the program he mentioned a few seconds earlier and started a link to the tower. "Now it's not perfect, being usb and all, but it should get the job done."

Michael then opened up the hacking program off of his usb drive. It opened and took up the full screen, giving us two options. One was to enter the number of digits in the code we were trying to hack. The other was the URL of the website. After we filled in the info to the best of our ability, a start button appeared under the two boxes.

"Here goes nothing," said Michael as he clicked the start button. Immediately, the computer tower under the desk started to buzz loudly, creating an iritating sound. It soon faded to the back of my mind. After about 30 seconds, both the desktop screen and Michael's laptop screen went completely white. Another few seconds later, the tower shut off and the laptop returned to normal. An internet explorer window popped up and opened the sight we had visited earlier.

Every two seconds, a letter or number would show up in the box. This continued for about 30 seconds before the box turned green and the screen turned blue. This time though, instead of crashing, the screen displayed what looked like a notice.

It showed some long text which none of us took time to read above a picture. At the sight of it, the atmosphere became grave the longer we looked, and the more our hearts filled with despair. The picture on the screen was of Latias.

I instantly felt a grip on my shoulder as Latias, now visible, gripped it and hid behind me. "Scroll up and read the text," I said.

"Here it is," said Michael. He cleared his throat before continuing and reading the notice out loud. "This creature escaped one of our transport teams and is suspected to be in the state of Washington. If found, attempt imediate capture. If capture fails... kill on sight," finished Michael, the last words coming out of him more as a choke than real words.

I turned around and held Latias, doing my best to comfort her. After all, an order had just been given for her execution.

"We've got to hide her somewhere," said Ryan. "Whoever these guys are, it looks like they're serious about getting her back."

"Yeah," said Michael. "Let me see what else I can find on this website." Michael closed the notice and began to explore the website that was behind it. After looking over it for about five minutes, he discovered that there were several weapon orders sent out to various unnamed companies. There was also some sort of satellite tracking page, a page about orders for different groups, and an alert system which was likely the cause of the message we saw.

Before he got a chance to search for more, his hard drive on his laptop exploded. Literally. Sparks flew from every port on it and the screen shut down. We all stared at the slightly smoking piece of hardware in front of him. "Well, so much for exploring the site," said Ryan.

"It's a good thing I got it insured a few days ago," said Michael, still shocked over the sudden death of his computer. He then shut his broken laptop and turned around to face us. "So what do we do now?"

"All we can do at the moment is keep her with us," I said, still looking down at her as she hugged me with her eyes closed. I mostly felt sorry for her. I mean, I just met her last night, but already I felt that she was a friend to us. We were willing to do anything to protect her and help her. "It's not like we can really take her anywhere."

"Let's go," said Michael suddenly. "I feel like someone's watching us."

"Yeah," said Ryan. "I'm feeling it too."

"Then let's go," I said. "Latias, you'll need to turn invisible again." She looked up at me for a second. "Don't worry. We'll get you out of this." She gave me a weak smile and then turned invisible, eliminating our view of her.

"The door is gonna lock in about three minutes," said Michael. "Security and all."

We quickly left the lab, making sure to take Michael's broken laptop, his usb, and his cable with us. When we got back to the dorm, it was about one in the afternoon. Some of the other guys might be back, so we decided to sneak her in through our bedroom window. After we got inside, we spent a couple of hours talking about our options and our plan of attack for protecting Latias.

"Sir, I've detected another connection attempting to reach our servers."

"Another one? Where from?"

"It's from some small college in the state."

"Get me a feed of their screen."

... ... "They found a way in, sir."

"Destroy their system."

"Aye sir. Uploading the virus now."

"Good. We don't want anyone finding out about our 'little friend'. Just for the hell of it, bring up the security camera feeds in the room."

... ... ...

"Sir, it looks like they're leaving."

"Good then."

Here's the plan we came up with. We knew Latias could understand English, but we didn't know if she could read it. When we asked her to read through some books and then tell us what happened through her telepathy, she did the same thing as before when she shared her memories with me and showed me what she imagined. Sure enough, it was spot on to what the words were describing.

With that out of the way, we thought about what we could do to keep her occupied durring our classes. So, the next day, we showed her how to boot up the XBox and some of our old gameboy games. We withheld Pokemon (for obvious reasons) and any M rated games on our XBox. We didn't want to damage her mind or something. So, to help, we decided to buy her a Wii U for Christmas and some mario and other games on it. Of course, that was Christmas which was still a few weeks away.

Then there was the food situation. How were we going to explain sneaking food into our room? That took us some time, but we soon came up with a good plan.

We set up an old minifridge and a microwave in our room so that Latias could make some instant food for lunch. We showed her how to work them and she soon had the hang of it. Every few days, one of us would fake getting sick so that we could keep an eye on her. We also told everyone in our dorm that we had bought a cat to keep us company and, if any of them were ever home instead of in school, if they could slip a pancake under the door during lunch. Of course, they all thought this sounded strange, but they agreed and asked no questions.

In this way, we kept her and ourselves out of trouble for the rest of the winter. Christmas morning was the best though. While everyone else had gone home for the holidays, we stayed behind together to look after Latias and spend some more time with her.

She seemed to know what Christmas was and was excited when the day came. She was no fool and had seen that some of the presents under our tree in our room had tags with _Latias_ written on them. So, when Christmas morning was upon us, she tried to wake us all up early. But, like virtually every parent we'd ever known, we stayed in bed for a half-hour, trying to get a little more sleep.

Eventually though, we got out of bed and sat up, eager to see Latias's reaction to the present we had gotten her. We decided to save our presents for eachother until later the next night while she was asleep due to what we all told each other was 'the sensative nature of the gifts'. Of course, this gave away what the presents were, but it was a way to protect Latias, just in case.

When she tore open the rapping paper around the cardboard box and saw what was underneath, she looked at us and smiled one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen. She then began flying around the room letting out a high "Whoo!" sound over and over. When we got her to settle down, she unwrapped the rest of her presents which were all games for her new system.

We set it up for her and showed her how to switch the input on the tv so she could switch between the Xbox and Wii U at will. Within the hour, we were all playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii U and Rayman Legends together. Despite all of our experience with gaming in the past, she was beating us at everything. Ryan and Michael blamed it on their lack of recent platforming while I congratulated her on beating us so easily when we were all genuinely trying.

All four of us lacked the skill to create any sort of 'Christmas Dinner', so instead we decided to heat up one of those frozen lasagna dinners instead. For us, it was just as good as a chicken.

And that was our Christmas. Video games all day and frozen lazagna. For the four of us, nothing could've been better.


End file.
